CARPE MEDIA

You laugh. But that’s the whole point, really. I’m not kidding myself by thinking that my friends need to know what CD I’m listening to (much less where I got it) any more than they care what kind of sandwich Joe’s eating. Let’s face it: any micro-blog with content less urgent than Joe Friend is lying bleeding on the floor and needs immediate medical attention is pretty much narcissistic by definition: its writer presumes that her every movement and meditation, so brief as to be utterly without context (157 characters max), is worthy of a place in her friends’ news feeds.                   

But stay with me: if the micro-blog is an utterly useless form of autobiography—as opposed to the cautionary memoir, let’s say—the only way it can justify its existence in something that calls itself a “news feed” (however tongue-in-cheek) is by broadcasting the kind of things no one in their right mind would want their friends to know. Confessing that I listen to aging classic rockers + confessing that I use the public library for anything other than books = an acknowledgment that I am Nerd Incarnate. And nerds, by definition, are un-narcissistic.

So there you have it: the formula for the perfect status update lies not only in mocking its inherent inanity, but also in subverting its even more annoying function: to show off. (True story: I know a fellow graduate student who informed her friends in a status update that she got all A’s for the semester. BLEEEECH!)

Back to me, people. It would seem to follow that any Facebook micro-blogger with proven success at their craft would thrill at the prospect of a website entirely dedicated to endeavor. I’m referring, of course, to Twitter, the grande dame of micro-blogging.

Not a chance. Unlike Facebook, micro-blogging on Twitter strikes me as the equivalent of shouting into a vacuum. When all is said and done, the posts just sit there, not unlike a pile of uneaten tuna fish sandwiches. 

Oh, sure, there’s the illusion of movement on Twitter—friends’ updates are provided in real time, so there’s an automatic scrolling effect that should impress anyone who hasn’t already experienced Flash a million times before. But where’s the dedicated space for Kara to tell me she once met Steve Winwood on an elevator? Where’s the room for Phil or David or Michelle to follow up with their favorite Winwood lyrics? Where’s the point of entry for poor Aimee, who’s got an amazing non-sequitur waiting in the wings?

Essentially, Twitter posts are graffiti while Facebook’s status updates function as a dynamic community bulletin board—the latter succeeds because of its context’s fully interactive interface. Case in point: not only did I get a perverse thrill out of confessing what a musically challenged, public library-loving nerd I am, but my friends got to share in the narcissism too, smiling at their own reflection in the form of their own nutty responses to my admission.

And when all was said and done, all of our days shone a little bit brighter with the gloss of absurd humor. 

As for the micro-beleaguered Gina? I can only assume she was fully aware of the gross irony of dissing status updates… in a status update. Which, of course, made it the perfect status update.